southern weekly protest 2013 – China Digital Times (CDT)http://chinadigitaltimes.net
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Censoring the Media at Home and Abroadhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2016/01/189833/
Fri, 08 Jan 2016 02:37:24 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=189833For The Diplomat, Freedom House’s Sarah Cook gives a rundown on the situation for Chinese media in 2015, a year which, she says, “may have marked the end of an era in Chinese journalism”:

The Guangdong-based Southern Media Group has been hit especially hard. Last January, former Southern Weekly journalist Fang Kecheng lamented the failure of 2013 protests by reporters and others who sought to combat censorship at the paper, one of the country’s most influential liberal news outlets and a pioneer of serious investigative journalism in China. Fang said censorship demands had mounted since the protests, and an exodus of experienced journalists to various internet start-ups ensued.

In April, authorities revoked the publishing permit for Money Week and shut down the website of the 21st Century Business Herald. Staffers from the two Southern Media Group outlets had been detained in 2014 under allegations of extortion. In August, Guangdong authorities published a report listing various new requirements that had been imposed on the company, including an increase in the percentage of CCP members among its employees. In September, three of the group’s papers ran glowing coverage of a military parade held in Beijing, one of the CCP’s largest propaganda events of the year.

The final blow of 2015 came on Christmas Eve, when Shen Hao, the former chairman of the company’s 21st Century Media unit and a former Southern Weekly editor whose idealism and professionalism inspired a generation of journalism students, was sentenced to four years in prison on extortion charges that many colleagues believe to be fabricated. Amid the Southern Media Group’s political tribulations and falling readership, what was once among the most successful commercial media companies in China has reportedly been forced to accept millions of dollars in government subsidies. “The case of the 21st Century group showed that journalism has been annihilated in China,” Cheng Yizhong, a prominent journalist who has served time in prison for his reporting, told the Washington Post. “The ruling party has won the war it started in 2003, completely.” [Source]

We analyzed all 75 leaked directives published by the California-based website China Digital Times (CDT) in 2015 that ordered “negative” actions such as deleting an article, declining to send reporters, excluding a topic from website homepages, or closing the relevant comment sections. It is difficult to verify the orders’ authenticity beyond the efforts of CDT staff, but the leaked documents often match visible shifts in coverage and are generally treated as credible by observers of Chinese media.

This collection of available directives is not exhaustive. In fact, it may only be the tip of the iceberg; one leaked order from the party’s Central Propaganda Department in September was listed as number 320 for the year. Nevertheless, an examination of the orders can provide insight into what content the party considered most sensitive. [Source]

The six topics that Cook found were most heavily censored include: Health and safety, Economics, Official wrongdoing, Media and censorship, Party and official reputation, and Civil society.

If the Internet has imposed itself as the place of freedom where resistance to censorship in China is expressed, it is also spreading the battle beyond our borders at a time when Chinese state-owned companies are networking around the world and when Confucius Institutes for the promotion of Chinese culture and language are being established in many different countries. Soon, the shadows of censorship will not only hang over we Chinese citizens, but will also catch up to you who are living far away, always believing you are safe from its reach.

About two years ago, a London magazine asked me to write an article. On its website, I saw all kinds of articles praising the Chinese Communist Party. It was not really my thing. I asked them why they published all this propaganda. The editor explained: “We have no choice. Some of our major clients are Chinese companies. If we publish too many articles that criticize the Communist Party and the Chinese government, they will just stop placing advertisements for us.”

I know that phenomenon also exists among other European countries as well as Hong Kong, the United States, Australia and even in Africa. Sydney has already more than six newspapers in Chinese language. Most of them are close to the Chinese government, even if it doesn’t control them directly. Articles and comments that are published and directly inspired by its propaganda openly praise the powers that be in Beijing. Hence, Communist party and Chinese government officials are already speaking out on Australian soil. Most might not even notice it.

[…] Civilization is an indivisible whole. When the government of a country begins to attack it, to gag it, to destroy it knowingly, it doesn’t only affect its people but humanity as a whole. In these times of globalization, freedom of speech goes beyond any one country’s domestic policy. If you watch silently as a foreign government destroys books and arrests people within its country, and if you then get even closer, turning into a trade partner or political ally, without every expressing qualms, then that same government, sooner or later, will attack your own freedom of speech too. [Source]

A prominent Chinese activist who described himself as a foot soldier in the battle for democracy has been jailed for six years in the latest chapter of president Xi Jinping’s war on dissent.

[…] A second activist, Sun Desheng, was also jailed for two and a half years on Friday for allegedly “assembling a crowd to disrupt public order”.

[…]“One of the biggest issues is that they have locked Guo Feixiong up for [more than] two years in a very small and confined space, where he hasn’t been able to move around,” said Zhang Qing, [Guo’s wife, who now lives in Texas].

“He hasn’t been allowed outside for exercise, or to see sunlight, and this has done huge damage to his health. I think that this has already turned into a form of deliberate harm; it’s a slow form of torture,” Zhang added.

“This is a form of political persecution, and it’s a form of physical abuse and torture to lock him up in such a terrible environment for such a long time.”

Zhang Lei, the activists’ lawyer, said his client was now in a very bad physical and mental state. […] [Source]

[…T]he Tianhe District People’s Court in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, erupted in denunciations from Mr. Yang [Maodong, aka Guo Feixiong] and his lawyers when the presiding judge revealed that he had added a new charge against the defendant — one that his lawyers had been given no chance to defend him against.

The new charge, “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” meant that Mr. Yang would spend an additional two years in prison, according to his lawyers. Mr. Yang, who stood trial almost exactly a year ago, was convicted Friday on that charge and the original one and was sentenced to a total of six years.

“This verdict is persecution. It violates rule of law,” Mr. Yang told the court in a firm voice as two guards held him by the arms, Zhang Lei, one of his two lawyers, recounted later Friday.

[…] The judge had told the two lawyers of the new charge that morning, and they had had no chance to discuss the change with their client before the hearing, they said. [Source]

This verdict violates justice and the law. This is heinous political persecution of me and Sun Desheng by China’s dark antidemocratic forces. We are completely innocent.

Hidden deep inside the law is the voice of essence and dignity. “You … have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” Your verdict, however, tramples on justice, violates humanity and wrecks rudimentary procedural justice.

You have concocted an unjust political case against us, who were uprightly exercising our civic and political rights. You have used judicial institutions that should have been applied to uphold justice and safeguard human rights to frame innocent citizens, crush human rights and trample on the core interest of the Chinese nation — the cause of constitutional democracy.

Your conduct has a very clear criminal intent, and the circumstances are particularly serious. This is evil beyond evil. Your actions have gravely violated criminal law. In a future of democracy and rule of law, the courts will judge your crimes in a just way and shine a humane light on your character, which for so long has been permeated with brutishness, greed, fear and hatred.

[…] I will tell you the truth: It is impossible for your shameful political persecution to achieve the political goal of oppressing China’s mighty tide of democracy. On the contrary, it will only help the people of the world to recognize your antidemocratic nature. It will only make more citizens stand up bravely either out of anger or enlightenment, rising like mountains and joining our ranks. […] [Source]

The heavy sentence came as shock to everyone following the case. More shockingly, the court added a charge right in the courtroom in order, apparently, to deliver a heavier sentence. Li Jinxing (李金星), one of Guo’s two lawyers, posted online that, after the court had completed its questioning, judge Zheng Xin (郑昕) said that it is the opinion of the court that an additional charge should be added to the original “gathering a crowd to disrupt order of a public place”—that is, “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” He demanded that the lawyers immediately provide a defense of this charge. The four lawyers (including two of co-defendant Sun Desheng’s counsel in the same case) objected in the strongest terms. “In terms of legal court procedure, when the Procuratorate has accused the defendant of one crime, the court can’t simply add another one, and sentence the person for two crimes,” Li Jinxing told Radio Free Asia in an interview. “I believe that the court’s action was simply to increase the sentence in total disregard for the law. I see this as one of the most ugly and preposterous precedents in judicial history. It is uncloaked political vendetta, false charges, and persecution of human rights defenders.”

[…] Guo Feixiong attempted to speak, believing that the decision was a case of naked political persecution of a democracy activist. Before he finished he was dragged out of the courtroom.

[…] Lawyer Zhang Lei added: “This is an extremely dark day in judicial history: when the prosecutors have not even brought the charge against the defendant, the court simply adds it to the crimes of the defendant, increasing their sentence length. This is a great scandal. It’s simply toying with the law, blaspheming the law.” [Source]

[…O]ver the past two years, the Weekly has continued to lose its erstwhile status. Journalists’ hopes that a collaborative attitude towards authorities could buy more room for solid reporting in the wake of protests have not seemed to pay off. Tuo has remained in charge, and according to over ten staff reporters who currently work at the Weekly, tight censorship has persisted. As a result, the Weekly appears to be losing its luster in the eyes of Chinese literati. A number of media scholars, journalists, and Chinese officials alike observed that they now take the publication less seriously. “I no longer read the Weekly,” said a former high-ranking official speaking on background in March 2014. In January 2015, an expert in Chinese media who did not wish to be named said she had not read theWeekly directly in years, only looking at Weekly articles when friends posted them on social media.

Economic pressures have accompanied the political pressures facing theWeekly, at which one of this article’s authors worked from July 2010 to July 2013 before quitting to pursue graduate study in the United States. Since October 2014, the price of the paper has almost doubled from about $.50 to about $.80, while the number of articles has shrunk, suggesting difficulty in garnering readership and advertising revenue. In a November 2014 article for Southern Media Studies, a media-studies journal, Wang Wei, the current editor-in-chief of the Weekly, wrote that both revenue and profit declined in 2013 compared to 2012 (full-year 2014 statistics are not yet available.) As its reputation for a source of popular exposés began to fade, so, apparently, has its appeal to advertisers.

The Weekly once stood among the pioneers of serious investigative journalism in China. Since the 1990s, the Weekly had shown how engaging with social issues ignored by most other media – while staying away from authorities’ red lines – could make a publication commercially successful while allowing it to withstand the vicissitudes of Chinese politics. […] [Source]

Chinese journalist Yang Zili first appeared in international headlines in 2001 after being arrested in Beijing and charged with “subverting state authority.” His crime was starting the “New Youth Society,” a salon with the stated mission of “seeking a road for social reform.” Mr. Yang eventually served eight years in prison for his involvement.

Once released from prison, Mr. Yang joined the Transition Institute. Unlike many other nongovernmental organizations in China, the Transition Institute isn’t engaged in direct social action but rather focuses on research work as a think tank. While there, Mr. Yang studied Chinese social issues and proved to be a prolific writer. Much of his work was on equal access to education and migrant-worker rights. His friends applauded his return to the public sphere within a profession that still allowed him to promote social change.

We had no idea how quickly the tide would turn. Mr. Yang is now in hiding. Chinese authorities last year detained three leaders of the Transition Institute and six people indirectly involved, including the lawyer Xia Lin. The organization remains paralyzed. It suffered this fate despite having a far more nuanced understanding of political struggle than did the New Youth Society in 2001. […] [Source]

A civil rights movement has been unfolding in China. As Martin Luther King Jr. was to the American civil rights movement, essential figures have been emerging from the movement in China. Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), who was tried on November 28 for “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place,” is one of them.

While the American Civil Rights Movement fought for the rights of millions of African Americans, the Chinese civil rights movement is fighting for the rights of all but every Chinese citizen. For in China, it is not just the powerless who do not have rights; those who are in power are not protected by the law either, once they lose out in power struggles. Almost every Chinese can identify with African Americans fighting for civil rights in the 1960s, except that he or she is in an even worse lot where there is no freedom, equality or justice.

This is precisely why Guo Feixiong has devoted himself to the rights movement. […] [Source]

Guo Feixiong, 48, was arrested for taking part in a rare public protest against media censorship outside the offices of the Southern Weekly newspaper in January last year [see CDT’s coverage] in the southern city of Guangzhou.

[…] Zhang Lei, one of Guo’s lawyers, confirmed on social media that the trial had began, but said the court had barred them from bringing computers into court, and that authorities had stifled or forcibly dismissed any arguments or objections Guo or his lawyers raised in an “intense” morning session.

[…] Security was tight outside the Guangzhou People’s Court with scores of police blocking roads. Foreign media and diplomats were barred from observing the trial, while local activists and supporters were taken away by police, according to witnesses. [Source]

Guo, whose real name is Yang Maodong, and Sun have been detained since August 2013 and are charged with “gathering crowds to disturb social order.” The two were originally scheduled to be tried on September 12, 2014, but the trial was rescheduled because their lawyers boycotted the proceedings. The lawyers said that authorities had failed to give them sufficient advance notice of the trial date, barred them from copying case materials, and refused to try two others involved in the same case in the same trial, all violations of Chinese law. Guo and Sun remained silent during the September proceedings to protest these procedural violations.

[…] Guo has been abused during his 15 months in detention. Although Article 25 of the Detention Center Regulations requires that detainees be allowed out of their cells to exercise every day, Guo has not been allowed out of his overcrowded cell once. [Source]

The statement adds that China “appears to be increasingly using criminal prosecutions on spurious charges against activists,” pointing out recent developments in the cases of rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, journalist Gao Yu, and Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti.

It is no surprise that the government construed these […] political experiments as my crime of “disturbing the public order.” An ancient proverb laughs at the folly of “bargaining with a tiger for its skin,” but that is precisely the task we have to undertake. We need to force a totalitarian government to shed its tiger’s skin, resume its humanity, and return to us the rights that belong to us.

The sentencing that I will now be facing will be consistent with the government’s entrenched habits of persecution. I am very honored to have landed in jail for my work. I hope that more citizens will come forward to join the fight for freedom when they see the dozens of us who are in jail. For me personally, another stint in prison may help to cleanse and mend me in small ways. Regardless of how long my sentence is this time, the first thing I will do when they let me out will be to go out and support constitutional democracy through direct action.

[…] As an aging veteran whose life has been given to democracy, when I look back over the last thirty years, I truly feel that our exploration and toil have not been in vain. Our path is becoming ever clearer, and the horizons of our souls ever broader. To have had the opportunity to rush forward on the front line of the movement for freedom, tortuous as it has been; to have gone against the tide and borne the cost of doing so; and to have glimpsed the beauty inherent in my personal tragedy and in the sacred purity that is part of paying the price – these have been the immense good fortune of an ordinary man, whose feet are planted on the ground and over whose head the heavens arch, as conceived by our ancestors long ago and writ large in the Chinese character for “human.” [Source]

Li Jinxing told Min Zhang of RFA that, during the course of the entire proceeding, the court violated the rights of the defendants and the defense lawyers. The court repeatedly and rudely interrupted the speeches of the defense lawyers and the defendants, and also repeatedly warned and chided the defense. It did so while the defense lawyers spoke, during the cross-examinations, and while the defendants spoke. In the end, Sun Desheng was interrupted while making a closing statement. The young man told the court how he grew up and how he chose to be a democracy activist. The court ordered the court marshals to take away Guo Feixiong’s written statement and then arbitrarily announced the end of the trial. […]

[…] Lawyer Li Jinxing told RFA that “in my ten years of practice as a lawyer, this was the most barbaric court I have ever been to.” “We felt the court was like a fascist, Cultural-Revolution style apparatus, and the judge pushed the trial forward so crazily that it felt like a tank bulldozing the proceeding.” [Source]

Mr. Yang, who is better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, will be the latest prominent rights advocate to go on trial for his part in small but attention-getting protests that rippled across China starting two years ago, when Xi Jinping assumed leadership of the Communist Party. One of Mr. Yang’s lawyers, Zhang Xuezhong, said a court official in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, had notified him that Mr. Yang and another defendant, Sun Desheng, would be tried on Friday.

“This doesn’t amount to a crime, but taking into account the current political situation, I can only say that I’m not at all optimistic about the outcome,” Mr. Zhang said. “But as his defense, we’ll do our best to demonstrate his innocence.”

[…] A writer and businessman, Mr. Yang was previously convicted and imprisoned in 2007 on a charge of illegal business activities related to his publishing work, an accusation that he and his supporters called a pretext to stifle his activism. He was released in 2011. This time, he and Mr. Sun each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison, said Mr. Zhang, the lawyer. [Source]

“Some people misinterpreted our instruction as not allowing press criticism in general, but in fact, we have resolutely protected reporters’ lawful professional rights and positively support media supervision via public opinion,” Jiang said.

The order that reporters get their employers’ approval to conduct critical reporting is “in line with regular regulations and addresses the problem journalists abusing their positions for blackmail”, Jiang added.

The rules are part of a national campaign against crooked and fake reporters who demand hush money for burying negative stories, which often are untrue, Xinhua said. [Source]

David Bandurski wrote at China Media Project that, while some of the rules’ phrasing was “dangerously ambiguous,” there had been a “degree of alarmism” in foreign media reactions. Rather than a practical shift, he describes the rules as “a warning siren alerting media to the fact that the Party […] is more serious now about exercising what it sees as its right — the control of all channels of information.”

It bears noting […] that there is little of substance in the June 18 circular on “critical reporting” that we can say unequivocally represents a “tightening” or “worsening” of the situation for journalists in China. Which is not to say — I repeat, NOT to say — that continued attention to the issue of press freedom in China is not crucial (it is), or that there is any doubt we’ve seen a progressive worsening of the situation for professional journalists and internet users alike in China.

Yes, the media situation in China has worsened in recent months and years. In a sense, for China’s traditional media, what looked like a seasonal freeze back in 2004 has settled into an extended Ice Age. You could say that the Southern Weekly incident in January 2013 was the culmination of tensions within Chinese media over the progressive rollback of professional gains made from the late 1990s up to 2003. These included bans on cross-regional reporting, efforts by the Party to more actively “use” commercial media as vehicles for its own propaganda, and the installment of news examiners inside media conducting prior censorship.

But when Quartz reported the headline yesterday that, as a result of the June 18 circular, “Now China can censor journalists before they even start reporting a story,” it got the both the story and the background wrong. [Source]

Now in China, it is impossible to ban all critical voices. But it must be noted that these criticisms, including critical reports, are bound to contribute to the development of Chinese society. They cannot simply follow the trail of many Western media, because their ways won’t always match Chinese society.

Chinese media professionals must realize that their attempts to do critical reports about the entire national system won’t succeed. China is establishing its own pathway for prosperity. This is an entirely new framework in human history.

Chinese media should learn how to get involved in the system, and play a constructive role. Their contributions will be measured by the results of their deeds. Chinese media professionals must know that in the West, media manipulates the direction of social development based on its likes or dislikes. This will not work in China. [Source]

They were heartened when China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, came to power that November, vowing to stamp out corruption, promote judicial fairness and respect the Constitution, goals tantalizingly close to their own.

[…] The new leader’s promises about corruption and fairness were not the only signs that bolstered the movement’s resolve. Mr. Xi also downgraded the post of domestic security chief, suggesting to some that the police would have to pay more heed to legal restraints.

The party’s initially mild response to a protest over censorship at the Southern Weekend newspaper in early 2013 also fed expectations that the government would tolerate more concerted activism, said Chen Min [also known as Xiao Shu], a former editor at the paper.

[…] The Communist Party has partly endorsed some of the changes demanded by rights advocates, like ending re-education through labor, a form of imprisonment without trial. But behind the scenes, Mr. Chen and others said, the gatherings fed leaders’ fears that the growing clamor for reform could crystallize into a threat to the party’s authority. [Source]

This week the drumbeat of anti-corruption rhetoric has continued. While attending a three-day national meeting of the Party’s graft-busting agency, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Xi warned that “corruption remains rampant on many fronts” and regulations to curb it must not become “paper tigers or scarecrows,” or ineffective, the official, English-language China Daily reported on Jan. 15.

[…] “When President Xi Jinping calls for a tough response to corruption it’s hailed as innovative policy, but when ordinary people say the same in public, his government regards it as subversion,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch in a June 9 news release. [Source]

I believe that the June 4 crackdown left a shadow of fear in people’s minds. And in recent years the authorities have taken forceful measures to ensure stability and intensified their crackdown on any organized defense of rights, creating fear in people’s minds about openly participating in actions to express discontent. For their part, the authorities are utterly terrified of any chance of social turmoil, and want to nip any signs of organized opposition movements in the bud. You can see this in how they insisted on bringing criminal charges against Xu Zhiyong, Wang Gongquan and other participants in the New Citizens Movement, ignoring the public pressure. [Source]

But as Jacobs and Buckley remark, Xu “is hardly a radical firebrand.” “For some reason,” law professor Donald Clarke wrote last August, “Xu’s detention seems to shout particularly loudly: What kind of government cannot tolerate even a person like this?”

]]>167787Political Discourse and Press Freedom in 2013http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2014/01/political-discourse-press-freedom-2013/
Tue, 07 Jan 2014 07:30:32 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=167374For China Media Project, Qian Gang provides a detailed analysis of political discourse in the Chinese media in 2013. In his color-coded system, deep red represents “political terms from the Maoist era” while dark blue, at the opposite end of the spectrum, represents, “words and phrases…that the Chinese Communist Party does not permit.” Light blue refers to terms “the Party does not sanction but does not explicitly ban.” Using this formula, Qian charts the rise and fall of certain types of language in 2013 compared to previous years:

Using the advanced search function on Baidu.com, the most widely used search engine in China, we can see that 2013 was a different year from 2012 as far as light blue terms were concerned. In 2012, there were 150 distinct articles using the term “universal values” in the headline, of which 78 percent presented the term in a positive light. The same year, there were 400 articles using the term “constitutionalism” in the headline, of which all uses we’re positive.

In 2013, there were 500 articles using “universal values” in the headline, of which 84 percent presented the concept in a negative light. There were 1200 articles using the term “constitutionalism,” 86 percent negative.

Southern Weekly, Southern Metropolis Daily and The Beijing News have typically been publications where light blue terms like the above have thrived. But light blue terms fell off sharply at these newspapers in 2013.

[…] From May to July of 2013 came the first round of attacks against light blue political concepts, but these attacks were met with concerted opposition from academics, lawyers and rights advocates online. Finally, in late August, Party media “showed their swords,” calling for a “public opinion struggle” (also referred to as a “struggle in the ideological sphere”). Both “public opinion struggle” and “struggle in the ideological sphere” are reminiscent of another term from the Maoist era, “class struggle in the ideological sphere.” [Source]

What’s striking is not the fact of party control over the Chinese news media, which is a day-to-day reality, but how the party is demanding journalists absorb a backwards and outdated study guide based on failed concepts of the last century. The new leader of China, President Xi Jinping, has been championing slogans and ideology from Mao’s day and the pursuit of a Marxist Utopia, a pursuit that led to great suffering for hundreds of millions of people.

Remarkably, Chinese journalists are being presented with this at a moment when communications have achieved a fluidity unknown in human history. The digital revolution has so profoundly changed how we see, understand and transmit information that even free societies are struggling with the impact. The dizzying rise of social media, the explosion of mobile devices, the fragmenting of democracy, the fears of surveillance — these are a few of the truly relevant topics for journalists in the digital age. Surely, they are of great interest to Chinese journalists, too, even if they must learn about them behind the back of a controlling state by scaling its Great Firewall. [Source]

At least three activists contacted by Reuters said they would not join the protest after being warned by police.

“In recent days, those who were planning to mark the anniversary were either asked to meet (police), warned, put under house detention, forced to go on holiday … or were detained,” said Wu Wei, also known by his pen-name Ye Du, the Guangzhou-based deputy head of the Independent Chinese Pen Center, which campaigns for freedom of expression in China.

Security was tight outside the gates of the Southern Media Group, which owns the Southern Weekly, with at least eight police vans and jeeps parked outside, and scores of uniformed and plainclothes police patrolling the area. [Source]

The Southern Media Group, which owns Southern Weekend, issued testimony in November 2013 that helps the prosecution of activists who took part in an anti-censorship protest in early January outside corporation’s building. Southern Weekend had issued an editorial appeal for readers’ support against the provincial propaganda department’s pressure to rewrite its New Year editorial.

[…] According to the written testimony submitted to the police, which was made public on [December] 27, 2013 via Wen Yunchao, the public gathering outside the building between January 6 to 9 obstructed their daily work as people and vehicles could not enter freely from the front gate. The company had to open the side gate for their staff and some meetings and activities were cancelled.

Several journalists, including former staff of the Southern Media Group, have spoken out against the statement in support of Guo, Liu and Sun. Global Voices translates:

Wen Yunchao has been keeping track of reporters and editors who have spoken out against the statement. Within a day, about 20 employees from the Southern Media Group had bashed the paper’s testimony. She Feike, who was also working at one of the media outlets owned by the Group in January 2013, wrote:

I resigned around the end of February and left my position officially at the end of March. The incident happened in January and I was still a member of the editorial team in the Southern Metropolis Weekly which is also owned by the Southern Media Group. From what I witnessed, I did not see any disruption from outside forces that affected our magazine’s production. The news beat operated normally. As one of the former Southern Media Group’s employees who had signed the statement [against censorship], I am grateful to Liu Yuandong and Guo Feixiong, among other citizens who expressed their support to the media group. [Source]

Hundreds of people had rallied outside the offices of the leading newspaper Southern Weekly demanding respect for media freedom after censors replaced the newspaper’s New Year editorial. About 100 editors and reporters with the newspaper declared a strike in protest. Dozens of other activists were detained at the time.

Liu, 35, had “attracted a large crowd of onlookers by holding banners and making speeches”, the indictment read. It said Liu did so on three consecutive days in January.

[…] Liu was initially detained on March 11 on charges of misstating the registered capital of a company in 2011. Supporters shared photos online of them holding banners calling for his release. He was formally arrested in April and police passed the case to prosecutors in June. Only on November 27 were the additional charges related to the January protest brought forward. [Source]

I remember those few days over a year ago when they started to force me out, shutting my accounts down and blocking anything I wrote or had written. I watched from the sidelines as internet users shared their comments. It was like watching my own funeral. I was so deeply moved — it’s something that’s hard even to describe.

These past few years I’ve been driven into exile, hunted down and attacked from all sides. And now I feel quite certain it’s all been worth it.

[…] Today is not yesterday. Being blocked is not something terrible. It is, in fact, a kind of honour. It is a testament to your strength and to your contributions. Last year they snuffed me out, and no doubt in the future they will seek to restrain my voice in every aspect possible. But life goes on, and in fact I enjoy perhaps even more space than I did before. Those who have real strength have nothing to fear from their obstruction.

The truth is, those who restrain us are the ones whose hearts are burdened by fear. [Source]

]]>166710Jailed Activist Finally Allowed Access to Lawyerhttp://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/11/jailed-activist-finally-allowed-access-lawyer/
Fri, 15 Nov 2013 05:03:57 +0000http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=165428The New York Times’ Chris Buckley reports that writer and activist Yang Maodong has finally been allowed access to a lawyer, three months after his detention and two after his formal arrest.

Yang Maodong, a writer and businessman better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong, was detained by the police in Guangzhou, in Guangdong Province, in early August on allegations of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place.” He is one of several well-known rights advocates held on similar accusations after participating in grass-roots campaigns pressing the Communist Party for stronger legal and political rights.

Until now, Mr. Yang has not been allowed to see a lawyer, which his lawyers and supporters have said is a blatant violation of Chinese law. Mr. Yang’s lack of access to visitors prompted speculation from some of his supporters that he was ill, had been physically abused or was on a hunger strike.

Mr. Yang told a lawyer who was allowed to visit him, Chen Guangwu, that days after he was detained, he began to refuse to eat food, accepting for 25 days only glucose drinks and a nutritional intravenous drip. Mr. Chen declined to talk about the meeting. The account of it was given by Mr. Yang’s other lawyer, Sui Muqing, who said the police had excluded him from the meeting. [Source]

According to the newly revised Criminal Procedural Law, which came into effect on January 1, Guo’s lawyers should have free access to their client. Lawyers’ access was hailed by China’s official media as one of the major “bright spots” in protecting the rights of criminal suspects. According to article 37 of the Criminal Procedure Law, lawyers must be able to access their clients without prior appointment or official permission, and such access should be arranged within 48 hours. But there is also a dangerous loophole: if a case is deemed to involve endangering national security, terrorism, or major bribery, access to lawyers can be denied. Police can do so arbitrarily, and there are few ways to challenge such a decision.

This is the legal black hole into which Guo’s case is falling. Although he is charged with a crime that has nothing to do with national security, the police told his lawyers that Guo’s case was “related” to another one in which suspects were charged with such crimes—thus depriving him access to his lawyers. However, the police have not made a credible explanation of how Guo’s case is one involving national security. Guo’s lawyer filed an administrative lawsuit against the police for violating the Criminal Procedure Law, but the court refused to accept the case. In short, Guo’s case illustrates the extraordinary, unchecked power of China’s security apparatus and deeply politicized judicial system. [Source]

Mr. Yang, 47, is the second well-known member of China’s “rights defense” movement to be arrested recently. In mid-July, the police in Beijing arrested Xu Zhiyong, a legal advocate who has also long been a prominent member of that loose campaign, which seeks to expand citizens’ rights through litigation, petitions, publicity and training.

“I think the general reason is that the authorities are putting pressure on many dissidents, and Yang Maodong is one of them,” Mr. Sui said. “I think the direct reason may be his involvement in the protests at the Southern Weekend.”

Mr. Yang was among a group of activists who gathered near the offices of the newspaper Southern Weekend in Guangzhou in January, offering encouragement to reporters and editors there who were protesting what they called heavy-handed censorship of an editorial.[Source]

In a video interview on the protest scene, Mr. Guo told people that all political reform must start by allowing people to exercise their political rights, and allowing them to demonstrate and protest. But he said the first step should be freedom of expression that liberates people’s voices. He told onlookers that democracy is sovereignty by the people who elect their leaders on all levels. He said China’s censorship is the most reactionary system of thought policing and should have long been abolished. He said that we came out to support the Southern Weekend not just because they were repressed, but to fight for the universal right of freedom of speech that enables us to check power and put it in a fish bowl.

Ironically, at the beginning of the video, he praised a young man called Liu Yuandong (刘远东) who, in the background, was giving a speech. He told the audience that this group of young people had been active on Guangzhou’s streets for two years and had been repeatedly detained and tortured, but they carried it on without giving up. He even praised the government for tolerating them and expressed optimism over the advanced development of civic awareness in the south. But one month after Guo Feixiong’s comment, in February, Liu Yuandong was arrested on trumped up financial charges. While he is still in jail waiting for trial, which is long overdue according to China’s own law, others in his group have been, over the past months, detained (Yang Tingjian 杨霆剑, Sun Desheng 孙德胜), arrested (Huang Wenxun 黄文勋), or driven out of Guangzhou (several of them). [Source]

Veteran Chinese journalist Xiao Shu was taken away by state security officials earlier on Friday in Beijing’s university district, in what seems to be an effort to stop his campaign for the release of leading citizen movement activist Xu Zhiyong.

[…]Xiao Shu, 51, is a well-known commentator on political affairs in China. He is a former columnist with Southern Weekend, and now writes for Yanhuang Chunqiu, a magazine known for pushing the boundaries in its calls for political reform.

Xiao, whose real name is Chen Min, started a signature campaign along with Wang and octogenarian economist Mao Yushi on Wednesday calling for the release of Xu Zhiyong [1], a law lecturer at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications who was detained earlier last month.

Xu, along with Xiao Shu, are among the most prominent exponents of the national New Citizen Movement, which has demanded more government transparency and the respect of rights guaranteed in the Chinese constitution. [Source]

Xiao Shu has been one of the most active proponents in recent months of broader citizen participation in social activism and change over a range of issues, what has been broadly called the New Citizen’s Movement.

[…]An investigative reporter for a prominent news magazine in China told CMP today that Xiao Shu has been under close scrutiny for months. Earlier this summer, the reporter was staying in the same hotel as Xiao Shu in Beijing’s Haidian District. At around 1 a.m. state security appeared outside Xiao Shu’s hotel room and asked that he join them downstairs. The investigative reporter accompanied Xiao Shu at first, but was immediately told to leave. Xiao Shu’s talk with state security went on for at least an hour, the reporter said. Xiao Shu later said they had insisted he leave Beijing. He refused, saying he had a right to remain in the city. [Source]

In a pointed reminder of the complex relationship between control and its subversion in China’s media, many professional journalists today mourned the passing of Zeng Li (曾礼), affectionately known as “Old Zeng,” a man who served as a “content examiner” (审读员) at Southern Weekly but also played a crucial role in the paper’s fight against overbearing censorship policies earlier this year.

[…] Journalists, writers and others took to Chinese social media, chatrooms and other forums to remember Zeng Li, his character and his contributions. They also widely circulated a copy of Zeng’s farewell letter, in which he looked back fondly but with some remorse on his time at Southern Weekly:

Looking back on these four years, I know I did things I shouldn’t have done, that I killed reports that I shouldn’t have killed, that I removed content I shouldn’t have removed. But in the end I had an awakening, preferring not to carry out my political mission, refusing to go against my conscience and to become a criminal of history.

“This letter is surely an important document in China’s history,” Ma Yong, sociologist and history scholar at the Academy of Social Sciences wrote after Zeng’s passing.

“He used to be an in-house censor for Southern Weekly, he was entangled, but justice always dominated his mind,” wrote Li Chengpeng, a prominent writer. “When this thing happened some time ago, he behaved beautifully. Now that he’s gone, he will continue to edit this country in heaven.”

“He showed the strength of character and dauntlessness typical of a Southern Weekly newsman,” wrote Qian Gang, a former managing editor of the newspaper and now a scholar at the University of Hong Kong. “Everyone has a choice.”